


take my heart clean apart

by jowritesthings



Series: Sanders Sides One-Shot Collection [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: 5k words' worth of purely self-indulgent intruality floof, Bathing/Washing, Comfort, Fluff, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, Mild Language, Morality | Patton Sanders Needs a Hug, Morality | Patton Sanders-centric, Nudity, Remus being Remus, Self-Indulgent, Sick Character, Sick Morality | Patton Sanders, Sickfic, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Deceit | Janus Sanders, Vomiting, but it's neither graphic nor sexual i promise, halp, heartsick, intruality, sympathetic everyone, that's how it be, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24573382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jowritesthings/pseuds/jowritesthings
Summary: Thomas is pining over someone. He’s heartsick—and Patton’s running a little (okay, a lot) worse for wear over it. Like heck he’ll ever let someone know about it though.(Someone finds out anyway.)*I own nothing. I am not in any way associated with Thomas Sanders or Sanders Sides. I merely wrote the plot and the story. Do not copy or repost to other websites or other places.
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: Sanders Sides One-Shot Collection [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760926
Comments: 19
Kudos: 218





	take my heart clean apart

**Author's Note:**

> I have an entire document. Well over four pages’ worth of various ideas and AUs for Sanders Sides. And what do I do? I ignore them all to write trashy sickfics.
> 
> Only my second Sanders Sides fic so tear it apart as you wish...just plz be nice when you do it ;^; Also we’re just gonna pretend that all of the sides have talked out their differences and get along and are nice to each other already in this. I’m the writer I dO WHAT I WANT.
> 
> Quick CW: sickness, one f-bomb (+ one or two lesser swears bc Remus), brief mentions of rioting (blame Janus), vomiting (non-graphic), brief (non-graphic, non-sexual) nudity, Remus being...Remus, some slight intrusive thought-type comments (again, bc Remus is...well, Remus)

“AAA _CHOO_!”

The sneeze echoes through the commons. Five pairs of eyes swivel around to find its source.

Patton sniffs. Debates wiping his nose on the heel of his hand. Rethinks, exits the kitchen, reaches for the box of tissues on the table in the living room.

“Are you all right, Patton?” Logan asks from his seat at the end of the couch, peering up from behind a comedically large kinesics textbook.

Patton honks his nose on a tissue before crumpling it up into his fist. “I’m fine, Lo-lo!” He forces a smile, ignoring the throbbing in his head as he does so. “The top shelves in the kitchen cabinets are just a bit dusty. We should probably clean them sometime this week.”

“I’ll take care of it after dinner,” Roman volunteers from where he and Virgil are sprawled out on a mountain of bean-bags in front of the television.

“Aw, thanks, kiddo! You’re such a tremen _dust_ help!” Patton enthuses, ignoring everyone else’s collective groan at his pun. (Janus can say they’re awful all he likes, but Patton knows the truth.)

Remus pops up from behind the couch, his shoulders suspiciously bare. His mouth stretches out into a sharp grin. “Hey, daddy-o, can I have your used tissue?”

Patton jumps slightly, still not really used to having Remus’ antics out quite so loud and proud. He side-eyes Roman’s twin. “...If I say no, are you going to dig it out of the trash can anyway?”

“Oh, you know me so well,” Remus says, and cackles as a lovingly exasperated (and thoroughly grossed out) Patton lobs the balled-up tissue in his direction.

Not particularly wanting to find out what Remus is going to do with the used tissue, Patton turns to head back into the kitchen. He pauses for a moment by the sink and lathers up, taking care to wash his hands and forearms with nice, warm water before he continues making dinner.

Patton briefly stirs the pot of simmering beef stew before clambering back up onto the small stepladder he had previously been on. Reaching eye level with the tippy top shelf, he sticks his hand in and roots around for the special soup bowls they never use. He really _wasn’t_ lying—the shelf was indeed quite dusty. (Good thing Janus hadn’t seemed to detect his teensy little lie of omission earlier.)

A stack of six bowls clutched tightly in one hand, Patton slowly descends down the ladder, careful not to fall. It’s more difficult than usual; the rave his pounding head is trying to throw seems to be interfering with his sense of balance.

Patton sets the bowls off to the side of the stove, once more turning his attention to the stew. He stirs it again, then opens the silverware drawer and snags a spoon to taste-test his creation.

In this state, he can’t really taste any flavor or the seasonings he put in, but from how the stew pleasantly burns his tongue and slithers down his scratchy throat, he at least knows it’s plenty warm enough to serve.

“All right, dinner time!” Patton calls out, grabbing the ladle to serve everyone.

Roman and Remus are the first to enter the kitchen, racing good-naturedly to see who gets first in line. Tonight it’s Roman.

“Many thanks, Padre!” Roman rumbles enthusiastically as Patton ladles a hearty helping into his bowl. “Supper smells wonderful.”

“Well, shucks!” The cheesy, instinctual grin that always seems to precede his puns pops up on Patton’s face. “Thanks for the _soup_ er compliment! _Bone_ appetit!”

Remus shoves Roman aside before the prince-like side can respond. “I’m sure it’ll taste great, but do you want to know what would taste even better?” Remus waggles his eyebrows, watching with sharp, hawklike eyes as Patton pours stew into a bowl for him.

“No, I do not want to know,” Patton says firmly.

(“Pickled cow braaains!” Remus shrills anyway as Roman drags him over to the table and, to his credit, it isn’t the _worst_ thing he could have said.)

Next up is Virgil, who approaches Patton with his head down and his gaze locked onto a fidget spinner, twirling it in time with whatever emo-ish music is loudly spilling out of his earbuds.

“Uh-uh-uh,” Patton chides lightly. “No electronics at the dinner table, mister.” Virgil had quite the anxiety attack over Thomas’ current crush earlier that afternoon, though, so Patton refrains from commenting on the fidget spinner. He hands Virgil a bowl and gently brushes a hand against the small of his back, directing him towards the dinner table after the others.

Finally comes Janus, then Logan, who receive their bowls of beef stew with a pleased “looks _horrible_ ” and a soft “thank you” respectively.

Once everyone else has received their dinner, Patton serves himself and sits down in his usual chair between Logan and Virgil. The abrupt motion sends a wave of dizziness rushing through his body, and he blinks furiously to clear the black spots out of his vision.

“All right,” he speaks up to mask his physical discomfort. “Does anyone feel like saying a blessing tonight?”

Oddly enough, Remus’ hand shoots up into the air. “Pick me, pick me!” he crows.

Roman eyes his fellow creative side suspiciously, and perhaps Patton should do the same, but he really just wants dinner to be over with already, so he can go to his room and sleep. It’s easiest to let Remus say his piece than to wheedle one of the others into doing it.

“Go ahead, Remus,” Patton says, grabbing for Logan and Virgil’s hands. Janus somewhat reluctantly joins the chain of held hands, taking Logan and Roman’s hands up in his gloved ones. Roman stalwartly avoids grasping Remus’ hand.

“Dear God and Jesus and whoever,” Remus begins, “thanks for the grub!” He pauses. “Also, thanks for giving me a really big—”

“—aaand I think that’s good!” Patton quickly interjects. “Wow, Remus. That was, um, a very nice blessing. Thank you.” He glances around at the other sides seated around the table, releasing Logan and Virgil’s hands. “All right, kiddos! Dig in!”

Everyone else immediately begins eating with gusto (except Virgil, of course, Patton clucks to himself. the poor sweetie, with his sensitive tummy). Usually Patton would do the same, but tonight, he looks down at the food in front of him, and the mere thought of eating any of it makes him sick to his stomach.

“Thank you for providing us with proper nourishment tonight, Patton,” Logan speaks up after a moment of eating in silence. “The food is delicious as always.”

“Well, it’s _soup_ er good to hear that!” Patton makes himself respond, his heart really not in making jokes anymore.

Roman pauses, his spoon halfway to his mouth. He gives Patton a strange look. “You’ve already used that one, Padre.”

“Oh, yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Patton laughs awkwardly. “Whoopsie-daisy.” He wracks his sluggish brain for another one, managing to pop out a response within a somewhat acceptable time frame. “I guess I’ll just have to _cook_ up some new puns, then.”

Now that they’ve had a chance to get a bit of food in their systems, the others break off into conversation. Roman boisterously starts off a story about his latest venture in the Imagination, waving his spoon about for emphasis. Logan and Janus provide occasional fact-checking and snarky commentary. Virgil and Remus take to kicking each other from their opposing sides of the table.

Normally Patton would find himself right in the thick of the conversation, nodding and oohing and aahing in all the right places, and providing puns and dad jokes as needed. Tonight, however, he is too out of it to do even that. The sounds of the others’ conversation seems strangely far away in his clogged ears.

Exhaling quietly, Patton stirs his stew with his spoon, trying to work up the nerve to move a spoonful of it up to his mouth.

Logan is the one who spots his lackluster appetite. Of course it’s Logan.

“Patton, are you quite sure that you are all right?” he asks, concerned at the amount of stew in Patton’s bowl, which hasn’t changed since he sat down to eat.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m totally fine!” Patton tries to wave him off, but Janus, his forked tongue flicking out to smell the air, looks at him askance.

“...Okay, so I’m not feeling too hungry right now,” he admits. It isn’t _exactly_ a lie—it just isn’t exactly the answer to Logan’s question either. “Maybe I ate too much at lunch?” He’d only had three crackers and half a glass of water, but even that had felt like too much for his sickly stomach—so again, not _entirely_ a lie.

Janus nods, satisfied enough at the answer, and turns back to his soup. Until Virgil accidentally kicks his shin instead of Remus’, and he joins in on the foot wars raging beneath the table.

The vague sick feeling solidifies into something more Patton’s stomach, but to throw off any more suspicions, he begins to force down stew. He fights the urge to gag.

“You know, once I ate an entire tub of blue icing, and my poop was green for three whole days after!” Remus contributes out of nowhere.

Roman’s face turns green at the thought. “We are _eating_ , you wannabe Betelgeuse,” he says, scandalized. Then he pauses. “Wait, is that why the icing for my cupcakes went missing that one time a few months ago?”

“So what’s the first thing you guys want to do when Thomas gets out of quarantine?” Patton distracts before the Creativitwins can really get going.

Roman brightens, successfully distracted. “Ooh!” A lovestruck expression dances across his face. “I want Thomas to meet up with his crush for a coffee date, maybe with a sweet confession accompanying those sweet pastries.”

“Same,” Remus agrees, foregoing a spoon to slurp up soup with the side of the bowl, “only I want Thomas to fuck ‘im.”

Virgil chokes on his water, coughing loudly. Patton carefully thumps his back a couple times, making sure he’s okay.

“W-well,” Patton says, “meeting up with his crush certainly would be a fun way to celebrate being around others again. Although, ah, maybe we shouldn’t become _quite_ so reacquainted just yet, Remus.” He turns to the left. “How about you, Logan?”

Logan pushes his glasses up on his nose. “I have found myself missing libraries the most,” he answers in a carefully clinical tone. (The longing leaks through nonetheless, but nobody’s about to call him out on it.) “As useful as the internet can be in gathering information, the feel of a book in one’s hands and actual pages between one’s fingers is...enjoyable.”

“That sounds wonderful!” Patton gushes, injecting enthusiasm into his tone and ignoring how everything _aches_ as he does so. “And how about you, Janus?”

Janus puts his spoon down on the table, looking at his gloved hands as he stretches them out in front of him. “I _totally_ do not want Thomas to join the protests against the police brutality. Of _course_ not. Rioting against the state is _always_ bad.”

Patton blinks. He started this conversation topic in an attempt to keep dinnertime conversation nice, light, and meaningless, yet here they are again. Gosh darn it.

Virgil snorts into his bowl of stew. “Yeah, why don’t we just ask Thomas’ crush to go looting a Walmart with us? Perfect first date. What a way to make an impression.”

“Exactly,” Janus purrs.

A discussion on the merits of various types of protests rapidly sparks up, drawing all of the other sides in and growing louder and more lively by the minute. Patton is too, too tired to try and quell the intense discussion this time.

Good lord. Patton would shake his head, but his world is already spinning enough. He wanted dinner to be a quick, quiet affair, hadn’t even planned on doing the dishes tonight—but it looks like he’s in for the long haul.

* * *

When Patton finally manages to stumble up to his room for the night, mumbling excuses and a halfhearted “goodnight” to everyone, he knows more about rioting as a method of protest than he ever wanted to know.

He barely makes it into his room before collapsing.

The floor of his room is cold against his fevered skin. He shivers once, twice, thrice, until he can’t seem to stop. He can’t work up the energy to get up—can’t even convince himself to sprawl out in a more comfortable position.

As much as Patton loves Thomas, and as much as he wants them all to have that happily ever after...he really, _really_ dislikes this part of relationships.

He’s heartsick.

Thomas hasn’t seen his crush in months. The outing he had planned to confess during was ruined, cancelled due to the outbreak of coronavirus. He’s wallowing away, missing his crush, terrified his crush will tire of his constant texts and calls, anxious about not confessing at all yet anxious about not confessing in person.

Heartsick.

And unfortunately for Patton, Thomas’ metaphorical “heart”, this term becomes rather literal.

Amassing what little energy he has left, Patton forces himself to roll over and clamber up onto all fours. He can’t let himself fall asleep on the floor. If one of the others come in and find him like that, they’ll panic and blow everything out of proportion. He’s been just fine dealing with this before; there’s no point dragging them all into it now.

Patton wobbles up onto his feet just in time to dash back out into the hall as bile rises up in his throat.

He manages to make it into the bathroom in the nick of time. Practically falling over the toilet, the sparse contents of Patton’s dinner make a painful reappearance.

Unbidden, a few stray tears slip their way out of Patton’s hazy eyes. He pants quietly, draped across the toilet and unable to do anything but ride out the sickness.

Once Patton feels a little more certain that his stomach has stopped regurgitating food, he closes his mouth and covers it with his hands, ignoring the acrid taste in favor of silencing his cries. The others are all downstairs, so they won’t hear him, but he can’t chance it all the same, can’t break the tentative truce just for this. They only _just_ got things back to a tentative state of normalcy in the mindscape; he can’t go and ruin it all again just because he’s feeling a little worse for wear.

“Wow, Patty-cake!”

A voice startles him up into a quasi-sitting position. Patton tries to look around for the source, but everything is blurring and twisting in front of him. His glasses must have fallen off at some point between his bedroom and the bathroom. His stomach twists in time with his surroundings, and he leans back towards the toilet just in case.

Someone clapping cuts through his hearing, laser-sharp. He winces and bites back a whine at the jarring sound.

“Nice one. Although I must say I’ve seen better,” the voice comments, and through process of elimination, Patton decides that it must be Remus in the doorway. None of the others—not even Janus—would say such a thing. Probably.

But then a hand rests on his back, rubbing gentle circles, and he rethinks. Surely Remus wouldn’t be so soft...his personality _is_ rather, erm, abrasive.

“Did you know that some birds vomit food into their babies’ mouths to feed them?” the voice says conversationally, and yep, nope, it’s Remus.

Patton groans pitifully.

“We’re not birds though, so you shouldn’t try stuff like that just to get us all fed and taken care of!” Remus continues, and something hidden within the creative side’s jovial tone makes Patton think. Is Remus...trying to help, in his own wacky way? Is there some convoluted metaphor mixed in there? Gosh, Logan would be so much better at figuring it out. Maybe Patton will ask Logan later, once he’s feeling better again.

“Mmmokay, get naked time now.”

If Remus’ words aren’t enough to snap Patton out of his thoughts, the chest pressing at his back and the hands circling around his torso certainly are.

Patton lets out a tiny yelp of alarm. He writhes in the other side’s arms as they snake down towards the waistband his pants.

“Whoa, daddy, chill!” Remus gripes, raising his arms around Patton’s armpits instead as some sign of surrender. “You’ve got vomit on your shirt and yourself, and unless you wanna sleep in sick tonight, you’re gonna want to clean up. I know you people like to _actually_ take semi-regular baths.” He pauses, and Patton can feel him shrugging. “For some weird reason.”

“I....” Patton tries to push a coherent sentence out of his mouth. It’s exceedingly difficult—especially considering he can barely even make a coherent thought. “I can...do it myself. Can...can take care of...myself.”

“I don’t have to be our resident ssslippery sssnake to know that’s a lie,” Remus retorts. He pauses again, and when he speaks next, his voice is soft, tinged with...hurt? “If you’d rather my _brother_ or someone else, I can go get them instead.”

Oh.

Patton goes limp in Remus’ arms. And maybe, maybe in the morning he’ll regret the decision he makes, but in the moment, he’s tired and he’s hurting and it sounds like Remus is tired and hurting too and maybe they can bond in that. So instead of asking for Roman or one of the others, he mumbles out a quiet, slurred, “y’re fine, Re.”

There is a pause, wherein Patton leans wearily against Remus and Remus kneels below Patton, stunned.

“Wait, really?” Remus says. “Oh, I—oh. Okay.”

Remus fumbles back into action beneath Patton. Leaning over towards the bathtub, he clinks and clatters around, and soon the sound of running water fills the bathroom. One of his hands disappears from its place encircling Patton, and Patton almost misses the warm touch. Almost. From the gentle shaking and sound of the bathroom door shutting, he figures Remus waved the door closed.

Soon enough, Remus’ hand returns back to its position on Patton’s chest. Patton feels the hands undoing the buttons of his polo shirt, then they freeze in place.

“Wait a minnit, I’m creativity,” Remus mutters to himself, chortling. “I do what I _want_.”

Remus snaps his fingers, and suddenly Patton feels the cold touch of the air on his skin.

“I promise I’m not looking, poppy,” Remus says much too cheerily for the present situation, but Patton is more interested in the nickname he just used. (It’s much cuter than Re’s typical ones, but it’s kinda...nice, so he’s not about to call the other side out on it.) “Okay, into the tub.”

Patton stumbles up. His eyes flutter open, and everything is still blurry, but he can see well enough to get into the tub with Remus’ arms to guide him. He steps into the tub, and immediately the soothing water cradling his calves warms him.

His hand tightly clutching Remus’ arm, Patton slowly but surely sits down in the bathtub. His sight still isn’t so good—he really needs to try and find his glasses at some point—but his eyesight has cleared up a bit more. Now when he turns, he can at least see the vague black-and-green outline that is Remus, kneeling by the tub and waving about...what are those, shampoo bottles? Soap?

Remus babbles aimlessly as he pours soap into the tub for Patton. The words Patton picks up don’t sound particularly important—at one point it sounds suspiciously like he’s listing various water-related kinks, who knew there were so many—but the background noise of his voice is surprisingly soothing.

“How’d...” Patton trails off, searching for the train of thought he’d had not two seconds ago. “How’d you find me?”

“You didn’t exactly make it difficult, pitter- _pat_ ter,” Remus chirps. “Ya left the bathroom door open, and I’m a creep.” The way he says it is so off-handed it hurts, as if it’s a fact of life he’s been handed and forced to run with. “I guess I just couldn’t resist the temptation to peep.”

“No you’re not,” Patton says quietly. “You’re not a creep.”

Remus falls silent.

Patton awkwardly lifts one of his hands, trying to focus on balancing it on the surface of the water and not on the other side’s lack of a response.

“...You weren’t humming while you made dinner,” Remus finally speaks up. “You always hum while you make dinner. I memorized it in case we ever get sent back.”

“Oh.”

It’s a surprisingly...sweet response.

“Can I dunk your head under?”

Annnd back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

“Why?” Patton asks cautiously.

“Your hair has to be _wet_ if I’m going to wash it,” is the response, and golly, does Remus say the word “wet” weirdly. It makes Patton’s stomach do some kind of delectable twist (not like the icky gymnastics it did earlier when he had to throw up), and he’s not entirely sure whether he hates or loves it.

“Okay,” Patton assents.

Remus crows gleefully, and he places a hand on Patton’s bare chest, pushing him further backwards into the water and dousing his sandy hair (and again with that seemingly out-of-character softness; jeez, he’s going to make Patton _feel_ things if he’s not careful).

Patton straightens back up, allowing Remus to position him in the tub.

Remus’ hands, sticky and lathered with what is hopefully shampoo, begin to scratch at Patton’s scalp. He rubs the shampoo in with more force than is strictly necessary, but in Patton’s floating state of deliriousness, it feels firm and grounding and kinda good.

A pleasantly minty scent manages to break its way through Patton’s clogged nostrils. “What shampoo is this?” he asks in a lame attempt to strike up conversation.

Patton hears Remus shift behind him, presumably to look at the bottle. “Some frilly thing of my brother’s...rosemary mint, it says.” He pauses. “I wonder if this even tastes like rosemary and mint.”

“No, Remus, don’t—” Patton wheezes. “Don’t _eat_ it.”

“Too late,” he sniggers, then gags. “Nope, it does _not_ taste like rosemary and mint.”

Patton can’t help but let a small laugh escape him.

“Ugh, the name, the smell, even the _taste_ is all hoity-toity. No wonder my brother uses it.” Affronted as Remus sounds, it sounds like he’s speaking through a smile.

Patton hears a snapping noise. He grimaces, the sound small but sharp enough to remind of the ringing in his ears and the pounding of his head. He figures out what Remus conjured soon enough, though, as he feels water begin to cascade through his hair, rinsing out the shampoo. Remus must have summoned a cup or something.

Once Remus deems his hair to be clean enough (which, who knows if it’s actually clean or not—Patton certainly doesn’t), he sets the cup on the side of the tub with a muted clink.

“Okay, massage time or bedtime now?” Remus pipes up.

Patton is curious to feel what a massage from Remus would feel like—Roman and Virgil are always much too soft on him, to be honest, as if he’s going to break under their touch, and Logan is too methodical—but his head chooses that moment to send him spinning again.

“Maybe...can I...can I get a raincheck on the massage?” Patton tries to ask, but there are black spots dancing in his vision and he doesn’t remember his mouth moving, so he’s not entirely certain that he actually said it aloud.

“Certainly!” Remus responds. So he did say it out loud then. “You’d better get better soon then, so you can have the most _amazing_ massage of your life! It doesn’t even have to be your _back_ that I massage.” Patton can hear the lewdness in Remus’ voice, and he must really be lost in this heartsickness, because it doesn’t even bother him like it should.

“Wh...whatever you want,” Patton slurs sleepily. “Buh...but...sleep now, pl’se.”

“You got it, _pat_ sta.”

With another snap—quieter this time (whether because Remus muted it or because Patton ears are clogging up again, he has no clue)—the water in the tub begins to drain.

Remus’ hand reaches out, grasping at Patton’s, and the other side helps him stand up and climb out of the bathtub.

“I’m not peeking,” Remus promises, then he snickers. “Okay, I’m only peeking a _little_.”

As Remus begins to towel him off, Patton can’t find it in him to care. They all look just about the same, anyway, and it’s not like he hasn’t seen Remus naked before, too (not—not on _purpose_ , of course, it just—it’s just how Remus _is_ sometimes, and it’s better that he occasionally parade around in the buff than he replace all of their Disney DVDs with, ahm, unicorn porn, so).

Once Patton is sufficiently dry, Remus snaps his fingers again, and Patton feels soft fabric against his skin. Something feels off though. He can still feel cool air whooshing past his legs in a rather strange fashion.

“R...Re,” he says, trying and failing to sound stern. “Did...did you put me in a nightgown?”

The chortle he gets in response is enough of an answer.

“Remus.” Patton tries to turn on the Dad Voice, although he imagines it isn’t very successful with him sick, half-asleep, and in whatever frilly nightgown getup Remus decided on.

“Ugh, fine, spoilsport.” Remus clicks his fingers again, and this time Patton feels the familiar warmness of his cat onesie surrounding him.

“Mm...thanks,” Patton sighs. Looking down at the sink, he blindly grabs for the bright cerulean blob that must be his toothbrush. A thought occurs to him as he brushes. “Didja happen to see my glasses anywhere?”

“Yeah. They fell into the toilet when you vomited. Did you not realize?” Remus snorts. “I’ll make you some new ones later,” he hastily tacks on. “Not right now though. Right now you need some sexy sleepytimes.”

Between one moment and the next, hands grab at him, and Patton feels his world tilting about him, dropping his toothbrush with a clatter. The next thing he knows, he’s being carried out of the bathroom, bridal-style. Normally he would at least try to object as a matter of principle, but he’s so sleepy, and Remus is so surprisingly warm...so if he leans in to Remus’ chest a little...nobody’s there to notice, right?

“This isn’t really how I imagined taking you to bed, but I’ll take it!” Remus declares as he effortlessly carries Patton down the hallway.

A giggle slips out of Patton’s lips. Maybe it’s the haze of sickness, maybe it isn’t. (Either way, the sickness is a good excuse, at least.) Remus’ wordplay is dirtier than the puns Patton tends to gravitate toward, but admittedly, it can be pretty clever in its own right.

Remus turns the two of them into Patton’s darkened room, kicking the door shut with his foot. He pads over to the side of the bed, laying Patton down and pulling the covers over him with an unexpected amount of care. He makes as if to back away and leave.

Before Patton’s cotton-filled head can realize what his body is doing, his arm is reaching out to snag at the corner of Remus’ sleeve. “Stay,” he tries to mumble. “Y’re nice an’...warm.”

The phrase comes out much less clear, once his mind has forced it through his jumbly numb mouth, but he figures Remus gets the message when he gleefully jumps over Patton and onto the other side of the bed.

“Thank goodness ’m not contagious,” Patton murmurs into Remus’ neck as the two of them snuggle in close.

“Awww man, you’re not?” Remus’ voice is disappointed. He drags the covers over the two of them and, on a second thought, summons a few more to pile on.

Patton laughs breathily. “Nah. ’m heartsick. So, ’less you’re the heart too....”

“No, you’re my heart,” Remus says earnestly, eyes bright as he stares at Patton.

Patton’s eyes fill with tears. Happy tears, not sad tears. He thinks. Or maybe they’re just sick tears, or tired tears.

“Fuck,” Remus says, concern lacing his voice as he notices the tears glistening in Patton’s eyes. “Shit, did I say something? I can leave—”

“Language,” Patton scolds, but there’s no bite to his words. He smiles. “’m good. Let’s just...sleep now, mmkay?”

“Okay,” Remus hums in agreement.

There’s a break in the conversation for a moment.

Then: “You’re sure you just want to _sleep_ sleep together? Not, y’know, _sleep_ together?”

“ _Remus_ ,” Patton breathes out, lovingly chiding. “Worry ’bout other things later, but righ’ now I wan’ _sleep_ sleep.”

“So...you’re not saying no to the second option.” Remus’ voice is full of levity and glee.

“Remus,” Patton hisses again. “ _Sleep_.”

“All right, all right, _pat_ sy.” Remus drapes his arms around Patton just a bit more snugly for a good measure. “Sleep tight, then. Hope the bedbugs don’t bite your nipples or crawl up your nose.”

“Lovely,” Patton mumbles. “’Night, Re.”

If he feels Remus kiss his forehead softly as he drifts off—surely it’s just a tired hallucination.

And if Patton’s lips brush against Remus’ cheek—well, it’s just the sickness.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this entire thing at two in the morning, listening to Two from Sleeping at Last’s Enneagram album on repeat. (That’s where the title comes from!) Idk man, it just really vibed with what I was going for in the fic and just Patton in general. There’s even a cute lil sneeze at the end of the recording y’all omfg
> 
> (Also if anyone asks, no, I am totally not channelling how I feel sick rn but have no gf to take care of me. Pssshhhhhh nahhh totally not. Anyways so migraines and my lack of a girlfriend are homophobic.)
> 
> Come screech at me in the comments or on [Tumblr](https://jowritesthingss.tumblr.com/) or [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/jowritesthings/) or my dead [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jowritesthings/) or wherever you’d like! Just preferably don’t track me down and screech at me in person, I have social anxiety and I will cry.


End file.
